Tigana

by Guy Gavriel Kay

wondered how often men did what they did, made the choices of their lives, for reasons that were clean and uncomplicated and easily understood as they were happening.

how the so clear portents of youth were alchemized by time into the many-layered ambiguities of adult life.

There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.

Words were power, words tried to change you, to shape bridges of longing that no one could ever really cross.

In this world, where we find ourselves, we need compassion more than anything, I think, or we are all alone.”

But beneath them all lies the idea of using the fantasy genre in just this way: letting the universality of fantasy—of once upon a time—allow escapist fiction to be more than just that, to also bring us home.

slipping the themes of the story in quietly while keeping a reader turning pages well past bedtime.